How Does Power Change In Lord Of The Flies

Once upon a time, my parents decided that they were going to the movies with their friends. By doing so, I had to babysit my little brother and their two kids for the night. This meant that I had all the power over them since I was in charge. This sudden power that dawned on me as a god from the sky changed me. With this new power, I got to boss those little rascals around like they were dirt and I got to be mischievous. Power creates human behavior to change in mostly negative ways.

To begin with, in the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses the character of Jack to show that power can change human behavior to savage, arrogant, and violent. For example, you see Jack become violent and savage when he orders his tribe to attempt to

As an illustration, social scientist Shankar Vendantam believes that power increases creativity, “When people work on problems on their own, giving people a sense of power actually increases their creativity, their ability to come up with novel solutions. And it's not surprising, you feel like you have the autonomy to do things”(Vendantam). Vendantam’s belief contradicts the two authors mentioned earlier, as in his mind, he sees that power can help a human being (be more creative). Although Vendantam believes that power increases creativity, Dacher Keltner, a professor at the University of UC Berkley, believes that power takes away the human ability to adapt human behaviors, “Whether you're, you know, with your team at work or you're having a family dinner, all of that hinges on how we adapt our behaviors to the behaviors of other people. And power takes a bite out of that ability, which is too bad”(Benderev). According to Keltner people with power are selfish and don’t have the ability to understand other people’s feelings in the room. Power takes away the human characteristic of empathy, as the powerful individuals are self-centered. Paul Pliff, a graduate student at UC Berkley, has a different opinion on this topic. Pliff ran a test experiment to see how wealthy people are more selfish than non-wealthy, and the results show that “People driving expensive cars - such as a brand-new Mercedes - were four times more likely to ignore right-of-way laws than those in cheap cars such as an old beat-up Honda”(Wan). Pliff results show that wealthier and more privileged drivers act like they have more power than others, making them more dangerous on the road. The results show that people who feel powered believe that they are better than other people. Summing up, social scientists believe that power can make a human more creative, self-centred,